


carpe diem, and all that

by blackcanarys



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, F/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Post-Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-22 13:20:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22750282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackcanarys/pseuds/blackcanarys
Summary: It’s an unexpected love story, but it blossoms, quiet and silent, louder amid the noise, louder among the chaos. A soldier falls in love with a historian, intricate family histories intertwining across over half a century; it’s unplanned for.It’s still a love story.Or: Nate Heywood, Amaya Jiwe and how love remains.
Relationships: Nate Heywood/Amaya Jiwe
Kudos: 4





	carpe diem, and all that

The story ends in 1942: a jumpship lands in Zambesi, among the grasses lying near the village. The man hears many things, among the goodbye that would come. _You always had a way with her_ , he remembers from 1992, an elderly version of his lover smiling wistfully as she looks upon a choice she had chosen to forget. _I love you_ , what she had told him as she stared upon him on the waverider.

They share one last kiss — the memories of a sorrowful goodbye linger, but there’s a peace here. A happier ending, better than warlords decimating her village and separating her grandchildren and leading to them coming to America. The man tries to do what the older version of her had done: wipe her memory of it all, to lead a normal life, without the interference of time travel and the knowledge that she would outlive nearly all of her original team.

 _I don’t want to forget_ , she tells him, _because your memory is the only thing I have left of you to keep_.

He wills himself not to look away as he returns to the jumpship and leaves.

Soldiers who were recruited in the US Army before World War II don’t fall in love with the grandson of one of their friends and fellow soldiers; they don’t travel through time and say goodbye to their team, scattered through time for one final mission. Death, in 1955 already—Todd, the only exception (because of who he loved, goes unspoken).

Another death, far later, in another time period. A chance to find peace, to move on and blend in. To scatter through time a weapon so powerful it would need to be kept apart to prevent it’s abuse; to be murdered and written with your own blood ‘RIP’, to have the chance to fall in love again, knowing that you won’t go back because you’ve done your part for a destiny, a future greater than you’ll ever be.

To serve, to be fair, is a sacrifice already taken. To give up the chance to watch your family grow up and develop, well—blood is still blood, and the ties that bind are thicker than any plasma, as it was. Hank Heywood dies, torn apart by space, his last sacrifice. He presses his hand against that of his grandson, but he’s done his duty, and someone needed to do it—he’s done his part, and his part of the spear is safe. A sacrifice for the greater good, and he’s completed his last mission.

She holds Nate in her arms as he sobs, mourning the loss of the grandfather he never knew, the grandfather he never had the chance to make amends to. Her loss is quieter, but it permeates still. They both loved him, she longer than him, more personal than him. He’d idolized his grandfather, his dog tags a reminder that he wore around his neck. She remembers the man she’d worked with, the one she’d knew up till the point she snuck on to the waverider, in 1942.

So, Hank Heywood dies in 1965, in outer space. 

They’re all moved on, and Amaya Jiwe remains. Her future is one paved with tragedy: to return to her village eventually, after the war, and have a family. To become the elder of her village, and to eventually watch as warlords tear it apart.

History changes, and the time demon is no more. Sacrifices are sacrifices, and people who are born and bred to serve will do as they are told, actions that will irrevocably end their lives be damned.

To serve is a life changing event, and she’s served well. They all have. War creates the strangest bonds, and after she returns to 1942, she keeps in contact with Todd. With the others, at every chance she gets. She knows what will happen to them, how their stories end; so she writes to them every chance she gets, saving every response for when they’re no more. When they live this timeline, and go into the past, the future, to a place where they’re considered dead and left with one final mission, one greater than all the ones before.

 _We’re the lucky ones_ , Todd had written in a letter from after 1965. _Believe it or not_. _We got to live, to have lives beyond our service to others._

So when Todd dies of old age, she mourns him. She’s the last one left; and Todd had lived a long life, a fulfilling one in spite of damn near everything. He’d left no wife, but a loving partner, and no children. A fulfilling life, a happy one, but not one without difficulty.

She’s the last one left, but it seems it would always be that way.

In the quiet moments, when she reflects on the bundles of letters she’s got from her years of correspondence with long-dead partners-in-arms, she mourns them. They’ll always be a part of her, just as she was a part of them. A love that extended deeply, without hesitation towards the end.

Then, there was Nathaniel.

Love was easy, she thinks in hindsight. Nathaniel, in part, idolized something he could never understand. She’d fought nazis; he’d grew up hearing of tales of regaling how people fought nazis. He’d grown up with technology she didn’t know existed, or barely knew how to use; but his use of books was equally impressive, if not rarer.

But she’d never expected this. Not falling in love with Nathaniel, the way she did. He was an anchor, in spite of everything—he looked like Henry, in the eyes, the hair and the cheekbones. But he was from a different time, emotionally open when the men she knew kept them private and chose not to express them. He’d been honest to a fault, naive and reckless. She’s saved him more times than she can count, and he’d _enjoyed_ her saving him—the oddest part, she thinks now.

Sometimes, she thinks, that she could’ve loved someone else. Someone better, someone deeper. She did have a husband, one that wasn’t Nathaniel. But she’s never forgotten Nathaniel Heywood, the man from the future, the one who she never wanted to forget.

_Nathaniel,_

_It’s been so long. I think of all we had together, the life we had in Star City— I don’t regret it. Loving you has been an honor, an unexpected blessing but one nonetheless. I’m old now, just as old as when you saw me in 1992. I passed the totem on, Esi bears it now._

_Are you still with Sara, Zari and the others? Chasing villains and time pirates through time, dressing in ridiculous costumes to blend in with the time period you’re in? I’ve written other letters, for the others for after I’m gone. I hope you read them. I hope you treasure them, even though I’m not sure what I have left to say. Or what to say; that seems to be the case more and more now, as I get older._

_Have children one day. Fall in love again, experience the joy of bringing life into the world. It changes you, fundamentally. It fills you with a love you didn’t know existed, the depth of it changing who you are, at the core. I loved having Esi, but I found myself missing the conditions of the future. The epidurals, the clean hospital rooms and the technology that was used to check for the babies health._

_My husband died. He’s been dead for years, now. I chose not to remarry. He gave me Esi, and for that I am grateful._

_Part of me still loves you, and always will. I don’t regret loving you; I would do it all over again, knowing the outcome. Knowing how it ends, I would do it over and over again. I love you, Nathaniel. As a friend, as a girlfriend—as someone who taught me more about love and the dimensions of love more than I thought I could know. Thank you for that. Thank you for everything._

_Do you remember when you fell into the river? When you needed warmth to stay alive? Before your powers developed, and you had the ability to turn into steel. It was bold of me, but you didn’t mind. It didn’t bother you, but the change of over sixty years had been a surprise to me then. I’ve seen the world change since, but it’s forthcoming. It will still be another decade or so, before that happens._

_We had adventures, didn’t we? One day my daughter and grandchildren will find clips of Vixen, from when I should be dead—it should come any day now, but I’m not sure why. Luck? Fortune? Fate?_

_Time owes me, perhaps, but it owed all of better, Nathaniel. I’m still here, and as I draw breath, I choose to remember, to honor the memories of those I loved and continue to love. Times are changing for the better, and the future that my descendants will experience is better than my past. Even now, as I tell my grandchildren about it, they seem shocked._

_Death will come any day now, and I wait for it. I know it seems morbid, but I’ve faced death plenty of times, and so have you. Death is like an old friend, one who embraces the ones it chooses without cohesion. Without comprehension, but my time isn’t here yet. I’ve seen it, and I’ve experienced it plenty. I know how death feels, but it hasn’t beaconed for me to join my ancestors yet, so I still have time to tell my story, to tell of my adventures. Not all of them, of course, time travel is nothing more than a silly story to tell people now. My vision isn’t what it used to be, but I remember the movies they’re playing now._

_I don’t have as much energy as I used to; I’m old now, Nathaniel, but you’ve seen me like this. You still loved me. It means something, even if I can’t see it. People look to me for guidance now, for wisdom. I’m happy to share it, as long as I draw breath. I’ve lived longer than most people I know, and it doesn’t seem fair._

_Life is such an arbitrary thing, Nathaniel. Treasure it, embrace it, and live it to the fullest as long as you can. Old age reminds you of what you did achieve, and what you wished you had done—regrets are a hard burden, but ones that come with time. Missed goodbyes, more time with loved ones._

_I wish I had more time with you. My memories, they stay with me. I wish there was more; more to remember, of a future that I won’t experience again. I’ve told my family to await the future, because there is something better coming. I won’t be able to experience it again, but they will, in all it’s beauty and ugliness. The complicated emotions of a past that is gone, of the linear passing of time. I wish I could experience it all again. I wish I could’ve experienced more of it._

_You would’ve experienced it with me, gladly. I’m certain of that._

_I love you. I always will. Never forget that._

_Forever yours,_

_Amaya._

Old age comes for Amaya in stumbling steps, small at first, progressing into something else over time. 1992 comes and passes, and this time, Nathaniel isn’t there. She wishes he had come, but the timeline would’ve had complications; so she returns to the field where they stood half a century ago, in a tear filled goodbye. She’d been the more stoic of the two, and he the more emotional one; she misses him more than she used to, a dull ache she keeps close to her heart. The new millennium is approaching, and she wants to be there to experience it.

A quiet sense of excitement, but her body isn’t what it used to be. Arthritis ached, the years of traveling through time, the fighting, all of it taking a toll on her. The skies weren’t as blue as they were years ago, the trees less and an increased population. The world is changing, into the one that her legends had known and were familiar with. The ache in her bones reminds her of it all, of a history she didn’t regret.

A history she chose to remember, this time around.

It meant something now, she realizes. The years she’d spend grappling with it, between her daughter and two granddaughters; this was her physical legacy, but it wasn’t her only legacy. And for all she’d wished she could’ve done, it’s too late now. Time is linear now, has been for years, even when she’d wished things would change. The death of President Kennedy, the Vietnam War, everything that could’ve been remedied but wasn’t.

She’d heard somewhere, from someone on the waverider— _Time wanted to happen_ , so it did. It moved and there was simply no looking back. Grapple with a legacy and find yourself faced with more questions than answers. Question a purpose and find yourself chasing answers in the dark, answers to questions she never wanted to ask.

So she reminds people to seize every opportunity when they could, as soon as possible. Make it all count, when the time was still there. Let the record state that everything that could be done, would be done.

The funeral is held in the first year of the new millennium, when the new year is filled with only zeroes. Death comes for her now, an old friend she’s awaited for a long time. She goes gratefully. Silently.

She arranges for Amazing Grace to be sung. The meaning is different now, and she’s not in that Baptist Church with Nathaniel anymore, but the music sways across the landscape differently now, more somber than it is joyful. A celebration of life, compared to a defiance of what was an illegal and oppressive legacy. The music holds a spell, a melancholy that holds for the incredible, spanning legacy of a woman who achieved more than anyone could’ve expected.

The letters she had written for the legends—missing, by the time her belongings had been sorted through after her death.

There’s a man who visits her grave later, tall, with a floppy haircut and bearing a resemblance to Hank Heywood. He stands by her grave, setting down a bouquet of flowers, grief flowering his voice, tears shaking with his motions. No one hears what he tells her, but he’s gone by morning, when other people come by to pay tribute.

The same man is said to have come by over two decades later, having not aged a day in his life.

The grasses sway with the wind.

“Hey,” the man starts, standing over the grave of the woman he loved. Her letters are nearby, creased from rereading. They’re still legible. He’s unsteady here, uncomfortable with himself.

It looks like he’s aged years, since his last visit. It doesn’t show on his face, bur rather his eyes. “I died,” he starts, and the words don’t stop after that.

“I was choked at the circus, and I saw my dad.” It’s absurd, how it sounds, but grief is a funny thing. “I’m still here. I don’t know why I’m here.”

“I keep reading them, and they don’t— I miss you,” he states simply, one lover to another, interrupted by the passing of time and a history that was already inked in stone. “I was at your funeral and all I could think was that we should’ve done more. Had more time. Kicked the asses of a few more bad guys. _Anything_.”

There isn’t a response.

The man finishes, crouched down as he clears the dirt from the gravestone. Tenderly, carefully, like he was touching the face of someone he had loved (and still loved) for so long. His words are for her; only her. They were for an audience for one, reserved for someone who was gone.

The meaning they hold expands centuries, in meanings, in memories, in the intangible, in the expression of the tangible. A love story, plain and simple. No matter how it ended.

There’s one last sentiment to be expressed, one ever so bittersweet. “I love you,” he tells her, and that encompasses everything, all at once.

**Author's Note:**

> Nate and Amaya were a love story and I miss them dearly. Minor references to the season four finale.


End file.
